Category: All, Business, Charities, Customer Engagement, Social Housing
Arena Partnership was featured in this month’s edition of Housing Technology magazine discussing the topic of Omni-Channel Communications in the Housing Sector. Omni-Channel is currently a hot topic within the sector as RSL’s aim to keep a pace with the digital revolution and the needs and expectations of their tenants. For the full article click here www.housing-technology.com. A summary of key issues raised and further thoughts are discussed below
What is Omni-Channel and why is it relevant to the housing sector?
The term Omni-Channel has emerged as the variety of ways in which a customer engages with a business or organisation increases. In the not too far off past tenants may have engaged with their landlords in person at the landlords office, on the phone to their customer service department or via post. The options were pretty much limited to that. However now, in today’s digital age there are a myriad of options for tenants to communicate with their landlords and for landlords to communicate with them. These channels can include; text, tenant apps, email, phone, face-face, post, a variety of social media platforms etc.
This has lead to a Multi-Channel approach where ‘many’ communication methods have emerged. However as these Multi-Channels have emerged it has become evident that the real challenge is not just to provide multiple means for tenants and landlords to communicate with each other but for these channels to become seamless, integrated and consistent across each channel. Hence the term ‘Omni’ with its reference to ‘all’ being inter-linked. The ideology behind this being that if a tenant starts communicating in one channel there is an assumption that the other channels will be updated rather than each channel having separate data silos. An example from the retail sector is the ‘click and collect’ phenomenon, where the customer journey starts online and seamlessly leads them in-store.
Benefits and Challenges of Omni-Channel and future developments
There are many benefits to using Omni-Channel effectively. Cheaper communication channels can be used (i.e. online) reducing the amount of staff needed at call centres, service desks and reducing postage costs. The tenant can use their own communication preferences when communicating with their landlords, potentially improving satisfaction and saving them time. However for Omni-Channel to work best it has to be customer driven. Practically that means there has to be a way for tenant’s communication preferences to be recorded and responded to and that the data coming in has to be shared across channels. Pushing tenants to use one method above others is likely to lead to increased dissatisfaction so the challenge is to provide a unified personalised approach regardless of the channel they chose.
For a more in depth discussion please see the full article in www.housing-technology.com. Or if you would like to find out more about how our Tracker software supports Omni-Channel communications please email info@arenapartnership.co.uk.
